On-Call Rotation and Notification Utility

[TheZenbudda]

Currently, we have an unattended system. This means developers are in an "on-call" rotation and will receive text messages from our system any time there is a MSGW. We hard code the rotation inside of a program, which becomes cumbersome to maintain and lacks visibility for our on-call schedule. I seem to be coming up empty handed when searching for a tool that helps set up on-call personnel (maybe using a calendar or something).

Anyone have any suggestions on software (IBM i based) that helps with this? It doesn't matter if it's green-screen. I could obviously "roll my own" but time is a rare resource around here.

[tomliotta]

We hard code the rotation inside of a program, which becomes cumbersome to maintain...

Last time I worked under "on-call" conditions (many years ago), we also had a maintenance issue. Eventually I simply suggested that the staff member who was coming off of on-call status was responsible for updating the info to point to the next person in that cycle. The basic rule was simply that if you didn't do it, you were stuck on-call until you made the change.

IIRC, there was never a problem after that (except for any individual who forgot for a day or so).

[drmdub]

Last time I worked under "on-call" conditions (many years ago), we also had a maintenance issue. Eventually I simply suggested that the staff member who was coming off of on-call status was responsible for updating the info to point to the next person in that cycle. The basic rule was simply that if you didn't do it, you were stuck on-call until you made the change.

IIRC, there was never a problem after that (except for any individual who forgot for a day or so).

We did the same thing and used a home grown form of some sort for the person coming off call to update the who is on call.

[jamief]

I have a generic error monitoring program that is table driven.
you place all persons on call in order by sequence number.

We have a service that then calls down the list.

This could be modified to send an email to only the 1st person in the list pretty easily.

Program monitors:

• spooled files in outqueue based on table stored max spooled count
• Jobs in jobqueues based on tables stored max.
• any system error
• various monitors for end of day & end of month

Processes:

• has table drive business hours
  • internal email address for business hours
  • external email for after hours, weekends and holidays.
• uses SNDDST to send emails
• reads thru WRKACTJOB to check for errors.
• processes thru QHST* logs for start/end times
• lets you adjust the time between sending of errors for the same job.

and most likely a few other things I've forgotten cause of age!!!

Please let me know if your interested I can post for you.

[TheZenbudda]

I have a generic error monitoring program that is table driven.
you place all persons on call in order by sequence number.

We have a service that then calls down the list.

This could be modified to send an email to only the 1st person in the list pretty easily.

Program monitors:

• spooled files in outqueue based on table stored max spooled count
• Jobs in jobqueues based on tables stored max.
• any system error
• various monitors for end of day & end of month

Processes:

• has table drive business hours
  • internal email address for business hours
  • external email for after hours, weekends and holidays.
• uses SNDDST to send emails
• reads thru WRKACTJOB to check for errors.
• processes thru QHST* logs for start/end times
• lets you adjust the time between sending of errors for the same job.

and most likely a few other things I've forgotten cause of age!!!

Please let me know if your interested I can post for you.

jamief,

I am totally interested!

[jamief]

Gonna have to do a bit of modifications -- but its a start.

[tomliotta]

And be aware that such a schedule may need changes at any time for vacations, swaps between staff members, etc. That mostly handled itself automatically when the on-call person entered the change. Staff simply worked it out among themselves.

[TheZenbudda]

Thanks jamief! I will give it a try!

[TheZenbudda]

Gonna have to do a bit of modifications -- but its a start.

Thanks again for your sample code jaimef. I have a question. What is your $GetRunDate() doing? It calls program EPIN04 which was not in your list. It "looks" like it's trying to get a a date from some file. On the surface, it's possible you were retrieving the system date at the time the code executes. If so, I don't need EPIN04. However, it does seem like it might be a little more involved than just returning the system date and whether or not it is month end or day end.

[jamief]

sorry it gets endofmonth date and current date...
you can just do that with a couple lines of code...

I thought you'd be impressed by my holiday code -- that was a pain in the A$$

[TheZenbudda]

sorry it gets endofmonth date and current date...
you can just do that with a couple lines of code...

I thought you'd be impressed by my holiday code -- that was a pain in the A$$

Thanks for the info! Absolutely some nice code in there!